CDC Tournament

Pretty shot thru Team Thunders wake

 Blue Marin for the Blue Heaven

 Tournament Time! The Casa De Campo Marlin Tournament was last weekend here in the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately the 2 and a half weeks of strong winds we had here proceeding the tournament flipped the prevailing current that normally feed the blue marlin thru the area. While fishing was a bit slower than expected, There were still some good showings at the end.  We were in and out of the money a number of times. On day one caught the first fish of the tourney. but by the end of the day, we had dropped to fourth place. Day two saw one more blue for us and for a but that had us back into third but soon we were back in seventh place. Day three we caught one more blue and it pushed us to fourth place. We had another blue one hooked but it broke the line on us when it got to close to the FAD. That fish would have pushed us into third place for the tournament. Over all even though fishing was slow we had fun and enjoyed the competition. Congrats to the Shoe, the Contango and the Betsy.
The weather here has been outstanding. ( with exception of the winds two weeks ago) We have had very little rain and the temps have been mild. Nightly it still gets a bit cold. That should all change here soon as April nears. The winds will begin to prevail from the east and with that we will see more showers.

A FAD and its anchor in a Panga

The strong winds that pumped thru the area last week created very high seas and broke off a number of FADs. But we have seen a steady increase in the numbers of new FADs being deployed by the local fishermen. One of them pulled up to us the other day and we got a good view of the anchor, 10,000 feet of line and the FAD in his boat
This coming week brings Samana Santo. (Easter Week) Easter here is as big a holiday as anything, anywhere. The entire island seems to just shut down. Families take the week to vacation and spend time together. Casa de Campo will be absolutely packed from the coming weekend thru the following weekend. I better stock up on supplies as the store will be packed from open to close.
I spent much of the morning rebuilding our golf cart. Not sure what Matt did with it last night but It took me 5 hours to put it back together.  Looks like he was playing dukes of Hazard with it. As much as I would like to sit here and type in the air-conditioning, I have to do some more work to do in the engine room . Gotta keep the girls ( the engines) happy.

Dockside after another day and one more blue

Waiting for the next bite

Matt Rigging baits

Tim locked in battle

Backing down on a blue one

Matt wiring a small Blue at the transom

Panga running by us